The Art of Turning Victims Into Criminals

[This is the fourth post in a 5 part series] – I’m quite sure that Assemblyman Lloyd Levine of Van Nuys had nothing but good intentions when he introduced AB 334, the Lost and Stolen Firearm Notification Act, unfortunately this is another example of bill that will change nothing for criminals and just cause more problems for law abiding citizens. In short, this bill would require firearm owners to notify law enforcement within five working days of discovering that a gun has been stolen or irretrievably lost. As I mentioned earlier in the week, around 80% of criminals obtain guns from illegal sources and the idea of this bill is to crack down on that illegal traffic. Unfortunately the logic has a few major flaws. It’s important to keep in mind that ‘straw buying’ – that is buying a gun for someone who can’t legally buy one themselves is already illegal. Likewise, so is stealing a gun, and so is obtaining a gun from illegal sources, hence the “illegal” part.

First of all, and most importantly, guns are expensive. Anyone who followed the letter of the law and purchased a gun legally spent some real cash doing it. And anyone who has anything that is valuable, upon finding out it’s stolen, reports that theft if for no other reason than it has to be reported in order to file an insurance claim. No one likes to have their valuable items stolen, and when people have things they legally own stolen they report that. It’s the people who own things illegally who don’t report them stolen, and those are the thefts that this bill is directed at and that’s why it’s not going to make any difference at all. Just to recap, people who own guns legally already report them stolen upon finding out they were in fact stolen, who who have already broken a law by obtaining an illegal gun are not going to care about breaking another one by not reporting if/when their already illegal guns are stolen. This is just common sense. They are better off pretending they never had the gun in the first place than reporting it and opening themselves up to potentially more charges, who ever stole their illegal gun just did them a favor. But that isn’t the only problem with this bill.

If you follow the press around this bill it’s being touted as one of several which will “Help Deter Gang Violence” yet this bill makes not reporting a lost gun an infraction, and opens the person up to a fine not to exceed $100. Whoah. That’s some scary deterrence there. However if that nasty threat isn’t enough, the bill kneecaps itself by stating that:

(h) Compliance with this section does not require that a person reporting a lost or stolen handgun report the make, model, and serial number of the handgun.

Could you imagine reporting your car stolen but not telling the officer the make, model or anything identifiable about? Do you think they’d be able to do anything with that report? How soon do you think you’d be seeing your car again? So why is this any different? It’s different because this bill is not intending to help law enforcement find your lost gun, or even help give them an idea what kind of weapons are illegally out there on the street, it’s aiming to trip up people who own guns legally and turn them into criminals after they’ve already been victims of a robbery.

And just to add some brightly colored frosting to this already tasty cupcake, this bill will make law enforcements job harder. As a legal, and law abiding gun owner, the moment I find out my gun has been stolen I’m calling the cops. The moment I find out my house has been broken into one of the first things I’m going to check is my guns, and if they are missing I’m calling the cops. The only chance of my guns being stolen and me not reporting it is if I don’t know they have been stolen. Since this bill requires a report within 5 days of when a gun owner “should reasonably have known of” the theft that leaves a lot of grey area for interpretation what amount of time is reasonable. So, if in fact a gun is stolen and the owner isn’t aware of it, and the gun is used in a crime and law enforcement comes to the gun owners house rather than helping them figure out who might have had access to the gun and who might have been able to steal it, he or she now needs to contact their lawyer before saying a single word to the police. Anyone with any experience with lawyers knows that’s not going to speed the process up at all.

Unfortunately this is the prefect example of a gun control bill which is being applauded by our elected officials, yet won’t actually do anything to make people safer.

5 Replies to “The Art of Turning Victims Into Criminals”

The real stupidity in this law is that you know you were robbed when you get home and if you have guns that’s usually among the very first things you look to make sure you still have and get on the report so you can collect on your insurance. So the point behind this bill is what????

The City of Sacramento recently passed a similar ordinance but they did an interesting thing. They commissioned a study to see if such ordinances have had any impact on gun crime, or crime at all where they have been enacted.

The verdict of the study was “no impact”. Think about that. “No Impact”. So what did they do? They passed the ordinance, of course. Is it aimed at gun crime or criminals. I would have to conclude no.

Chief Bratton, before the LA City Council in debate on its similar measure, testified that the vast majority of guns recovered in crime investigations are not registered in CA. This means they were bought somewhere else, because every gun bought in CA is registered with CA DOJ. In itself, this fact means this kind of ordinance cannot have much if any impact on gun crime because it has very little chance of identifying the source of the weapon. Why then is there such interest in ineffectual laws?

I thnk the interest is for two reasons. The first is theatre, to appear as if one is doing something. The second is to harass law-abiding gun owners even further.

The vagueness in CA gun laws that can allow a loaded magazine to be equated with a loaded gun is either because lawmakers are pretty stupid, or because they crafting a minefield to encourage people to disarm, without having the honesty to announce it. Either way, law-abiding people are not well served by vague law, whatever your position on the gun control issue may be, as this vagueness creeps into other areas.

This particular version of theft reporting, with a $100 fine and no need to describe the firearm stolen is comical. The question is why did we elect the solons in Sacramento? For comic relief or serious consideration of issues facing the citizens of the state?

As I voted against the incumbents representing my areas, all I can say is that you who voted for them are getting the government you deserve, and I wish I wasn’t getting dragged along with you.

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The vagueness in CA gun laws that can allow a loaded magazine to be equated with a loaded gun is either because lawmakers are pretty stupid, or because they crafting a minefield to encourage people to disarm, without having the honesty to announce it. Either way, law-abiding people are not well served by vague law, whatever your position on the gun control issue may be, as this vagueness creeps into other areas.
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As you will see, they got a hair up their ass that the old wording wasn’t stopping folks from buying Off List Lowers (OLL’s)to build CA Legal AW’s. So Presto-Chango, they make a few blatant changes to the legalese contained in the PC, and now there are hundreds of thousands of law abiding folks suddenly breaking the law.

Folks, California doesn’t clarify wording, they change the entire spirit of the law on a whim.

As you will see, they got a hair up their ass that the old wording wasn’t stopping folks from buying Off List Lowers (OLL’s)to build CA Legal AW’s. So Presto-Chango, they make a few blatant changes to the legalese contained in the PC, and now there are hundreds of thousands of law abiding folks suddenly breaking the law.

Folks, California doesn’t clarify wording, they change the entire spirit of the law on a whim.

It’s the old adage about how infringement of rights doesn’t happen over night.